Stranger Things 4 is ambitious, likable and bloated

The fourth season of Stranger Things comes out at the end of this week! (Well, the first seven episodes do; the final two will follow in July.) It’s been three years (thanks a lot, COVID) since the last season ended with Jim Hopper dead and the Byers family moving away to California. Does the fourth season make it worth it? I’ve gotten to watch the first seven episodes, and I can’t wait to share my SPOILER-FREE impressions.

I’ll answer the big question first: Stranger Things 4 is good. It still has likable characters, it’s still bursting with creepy crawly monsters, and it’s still made with obvious love. Everyone in here gives their all, from the growing cast to the producers, who delight in every opportunity to pay homage to the ’80s movies that inspired them as kids.

That’s the thing about Stranger Things: even when it steps wrong, it’s so sincere in its desire to entertain you that it’s hard to be mad. Still, this new season does step wrong, not enough to make the trip not worth it, but enough that I’m going to complain about it for the next few hundreds words.

When Stranger Things met Game of Thrones

This is far and away the most ambitious season of Stranger Things so far. The episodes are longer than ever, with one being feature-length. With the characters spread all over the world, there’s a lot of ground to cover.

To refresh your memory, Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) has taken her sons Will (Noah Schnapp) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) to California, along with her new adopted daughter Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown). After everything that’s happened in Hawkins, Indiana over the past few years, it’s hard to blame her for splitting. The remainder of the characters — including Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Erica (Priah Ferguson), Max (Sadie Sink), Steve (Joe Keery), Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Robin (Maya Hawye) — are still in Hawkins, facing down a new supernatural threat.

Yeesh, when did this cast get so big? It’s great that the show has such a deep bench, particularly when it’s so willing to use them. There are a couple characters who feel like they’re just along for the ride, but the scripts give most of them good material, whether it’s Lucas trying to climb the high school hierarchy, Eleven having trouble adjusting to her new life, or an odd couple friendship between Robin and Nancy. It’s fun to watch actors in their element play around with this stuff.

Sheriff Hopper and the case of the bloated Netflix show

That said, season 4 does overextend itself a bit, mainly thanks to Sheriff Jim Hopper (David Harbour). It’s not a spoiler to say that he’s still around because he’s been front and center in the marketing; they released a teaser revealing he was alive fully two years ago. I side-eyed that choice at the time — why you gonna kill off a character if you didn’t actually intend to kill him off? — but was willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt. Now that I’ve seen the season…yeah, they should have stuck to their guns and killed him.

It’s not that the Hopper scenes aren’t good — there’s some solid stuff in his sections of the story — it’s more that they feel weirdly detached from the rest of the show, and this when the episodes are already getting very long. There are episodes where we follow five storylines at once and barely any of them move forward. Trimming a story or two would have helped speed things up, and Hopper’s is the most obvious one to cut.

It feels like Hopper is back because the producers like working with David Harbour rather than because the story demands he be there. Harbour gets showered with heavy monologues and action scenes, some of which are fun, but the question of “why” hangs over all. It takes away from what should be a tighter story more focused on the younger characters stepping up into their adult roles. I would have liked to see more of them trying to live their daily lives before things inevitably get crazy and creepy, but there’s so much story to service that we don’t have time. Hopper is back and it’s hurting pretty much everyone.

It’s Eleven’s world, we’re just living in it

Of the younger cast members, Eleven gets the lion’s share of screen time. Another problem with the show’s desire to spread the wealth around to the huge cast is that it kind of conflicts with the fact that, at the end of the day, the plot revolves around Eleven. Ensemble or not, she always ends up becoming the main character.

And she has some great stuff in season 4, particularly at the end, although her story slows to a crawl in the middle of the season. Episode 7 is where it’s at, people; the last episode of this drop makes all the previous plodding worth it. The producers have teased that season 4 will start answering some of the big questions at the heart of the series, questions about the nature of the Upside Down and the origin of Eleven’s powers. Episode 7 digs deep into those, and I walked away satisfied and excited.

It’s surprising how much a show can get away with if they nail the ending, and Stranger Things season 4 nails the ending…of this first chunk of episodes, anyway.

The waiting is the hardest part

Max Mayfield also deserves special mention. Next to Episode 7, Episode 4 is the best, and it revolves around her conflict with the season’s spooky new villain, Vecna. Sadie Sink sells the absolute bejesus out of Max’s arc in this one, and the whole things ends with a powerful climax that’s equal parts emotional catharsis and trippy music video.

You may have noticed that I hadn’t mentioned Vecna yet. That is because he is boring. You can feel the show trying so hard to make him scary, but it just doesn’t work. We fear what we don’t know, but we see way too much of Vecna for there to be any mystery, and his banter is several dozen degrees less inspired than that of Freddy Krueger, the ’80s horror icon that inspired him. Plus, it’s hard to get into a good horror groove when some of the other plotlines — particularly the ones that orbit around Hopper — vary so wildly in tone.

However…what would a good supernatural drama be without a few twists? Vecna gets a great one, and I have much higher hopes for him heading into the final two episodes of the season.

The first seven episodes of Stranger Things season 4 drop this Friday, May 27 on Netflix. The final two (the finale is a staggering two-and-a-half hours long) will follow on July 1.

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